Blog

On April 30rd and May 1st, nine of the ten eggs hatched. The webcam is not accessible online this year but during the day snapshots are uploaded every minute to this site (and every five minutes, at night).

You can see it on the left side of the page.

May 20: I was afraid they would never leave because they were already so active the last few days, sitting in the nest opening, while dad was hardly feeding them. This morning the six remaining chicks left the nest between 08:00 and 08:30, pretty quickly. The chicks are 20 and 21 days old, and Wikipedia says they could leave the nest when they are sixteen days old. I guess that the disappearance of the mother plays a part here. Still - a good job for a single parent, raising at least six chicks. Till a day or two ago I thought there were seven, perhaps one more died, or perhaps it left then nest a day early (is that possible?).

May 17: For some time I thought the chicks would be leaving the nest, but in the afternoon they're still there. Most of the time, six or seven are visible. It seems that not the whole complement (of nine) is alive anymore. On a more upbeat note: even though the weather was bad, the Great Tits in the nestbox on the other side of the house fledged yesterday.

May 15: The male is doing a good job of feeding the chicks. Sometimes he arrives twice in one minutes with insects.

May 13: The female did not sleep on the nest last night, leaving the chicks exposed. She did not return the days after to feed them either. The chicks are still very active - it's difficult to see how many are still alive and we hope the male will continue feeding them by himself.

May 7: All nine are still alive. There's already a lot of feather growth but the eyes are still closed. And they're so hungry! The parents are feeding them from 06:00 till 21:00.

May 3: The chicks are three, four days old now and all goes well. The parents fly back and forth till past 20:00 to feed them.

2 April 2011: for various reasons not much has happened in the way of new albums, but today I finally had a KAP opportunity again! The weather wasn't optimal but I got a couple of nice photos nonetheless.

May 2010: check out my new and awesome Kite Aerial Photography photo gallery, made when on holiday on the island of Vlieland.

February 2010: started 'The Daily Snapshot' photo galleries. The intention is to take and publish one photograph, every day. The subject can be anything and everything. I'm usually only packing a small camera and the photographs will be made 'as I go along' - hence the 'snapshot' qualifier .